The Weekly Muse #86
A Poll! A Quote! An Update!
Hello, all:
Sometimes I wonder what I should write about each week, and sometimes a topic just presents itself. Sometimes I have fully formed coherent thoughts on said topic, and sometimes it’s freestyling, so to speak. Today, we’re freestyling.
I present a random line from Apollyon, book five in the Left Behind series:
She looked awful, like a ghost or worse, a zombie.
Setting aside all else, I started wondering about the ranking here on the List O’ Bad Things to Be. Is a zombie really that much worse than a ghost? On the one hand, as a ghost you have some sort of consciousness, you can float about, haunt people, maybe hum a few bars of “This is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas. As a zombie, you’re mostly just staggering around going urrrrgh, right? Given the choice between an incorporeal spirit and a walking member of the undead, I think I’d prefer Casper over World War Z. (I’ve never seen Casper, the movie, but I read one or two of the comics when I was a kid, I think).
On the other hand, from a theological angle, if you’re a ghost, that means you haven’t crossed over properly to the afterlife at best; at worst, you’re some sort of unholy demon that needs to be exorcised. Strictly speaking, a zombie’s just a body that’s been reanimated by a virus or maybe Magic; the original owner isn’t with us anymore. If I’m a zombie, then, maybe my body’s tooling around southern Indiana going urrrgh, if you will, but my soul is, I hope, up in Heaven, or at the very least in Purgatory hoping to get to Heaven. (Start praying for me now, guys!). If I’m a ghost, maybe I’m still here trapped on this earthly plane Jacob Marley style, forever doomed to wander the earth while wracked in spiritual torment. In that case, maybe a zombie’s better.
I’m leaning towards the latter, but I’ve not given much thought, or any at all, to the question before today. What say you, readers?
Writing Update
In serial news, I have completed We’re Not In Edison City Anymore, and begun a new adventure: Meg, Mauve, and Malevolence. Long-term I’m thinking of combining these two and the prior one, And When Two Villains Woo, into an anthology. Stay tuned for further updates!
Closing Time
I just recently finished rereading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; here is a thought from one of the characters, Slartibartflast, to close this week’s newsletter out on.
"Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding what out really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.”
Indeed so. Until next time,
Michael
On ghosts vs. zombies:
This is going to sound pedantic and probably kind of irreverent, but I have to ask myself whether either one is something that "I" could "be". Death unnerves us because our natural state of being is bodysoul, and we're not sure what happens when our two halves are split. Do I sleep in the earth? Or am I hanging out in the clouds, oblivious to my body? Is a ghost aware of the processes of mortuary decay? Does a zombie's soul look on from the afterlife, horrified and disgusted? (That's a writing prompt right there.) And a vampire...WHO KNOWS, man.
Anyway, soul governs body in the natural hierarchy, so being a ghost is objectively better. But this is definitely a choice between two bad states, and it doesn't answer the question of "how *much* me is a zombie".